It's become a common theme to bemoan the change in the defender/invader game that's resulted in tag raiding becoming the primary method of raiding. This is usually accompanied by reminiscing about the old days when invaders used stealth to infiltrate regions, and would mislead defenders so they'd go to the wrong region or fail to realise an invasion had taken place - the suggestion is that things were more tactical then. Added to that, there's an "ideal" form of invasion suggested at - invaders slowly infiltrating a mid-sized region, then grabbing the delegacy one update, holding the delegacy with around 10-25 endorsements and remaining in the region for a week or so. During this time, defenders would work together to attempt to liberate the region over a few days, and would either win, or the invaders would eventually leave, taunting the defenders for their failures. Defenders would also have the chance to detect these invasions before they were successful, moving in to combat any they spotted. This allowed non-updaters from both sides to participate.
This is something we supposedly don't see any more, and I'd like to know why - as that's key to seeing what (if anything) can be done to return to those kinds of invasions. I'm going to make a few suggestions why - feel free to discuss those, or make ones of your own.
- It could be that raiders these days just don't enjoy that kind of invading any more. It's been "done" and tag raiding is the new, and fun thing. Certainly, there are people who love tag raiding, but we also have plenty of "old school" raiders around, and it's not just defenders who claim the "old days" were more fun. This may be a factor with some people, but I don't think it's a significant one.
- It's just too hard to hold onto a region. This, in my view, is probably the key reason for the change. Just as the daily data dump means that raiders can move in seconds before a region updates, it means that defenders can do exactly the same. To combat this, you need to pile - which means you'll end up with at least 50 endorsements. Defenders will struggle to get enough updaters to liberate - so perhaps will only manage that once during an occupation. This means that most the time, invaders are sitting around in a region, bored silly - not an incentive to hold a region. When defenders do liberate, there's very little chance to kick them out first, so really they're just racing against the clock. Moreover, double updates means you need to be vigilant twice a day (or have your delegate nation shared), so it's even harder to guess when defenders will arrive.
If this is a reason for the change in raiding style, then clearly to address it, you'd need to make it easier to hold a region. - Switching is to blame. Switching has been around for years - even when these "ideal" invasions took place, but it could be that invaders have finally woken up to the opportunities it allows, resulting in their change of behaviour. The fact they get several chances in an update means that they no longer have to sneak into a region in advance - they can simply blitz in, and then try again elsewhere if that fails.
- Defenders have improved their information gathering skills. I'm not privy to the information that defenders gather, but with the amount of script use these days and the improvement of tools such as the dossier, I'd expect that defenders have a much better picture of the movement of suspicious nations than they did a few years ago. This makes infiltration extremely hard to do.
- The Security Council changed everything. Most of the "ideal" invasions (as described near the top) didn't result in griefing - but the threat was always there. Liberation resolutions means that it's near-impossible to password, empty and re-found a medium-sized region. Even if invaders weren't going to grief a region, they fact they could panic defenders into thinking they would, might have been an incentive to conduct these kinds of invasions.
- There may be a lack of incentive. Following on from the previous point, there's not really much reason to conduct these kinds of invasions any more. This combines with the fact they may be more difficult than previously. In this case, something like the "annexe" feature would restore an incentive.
- We may be misremembering - many of these "ideal" invasions may in fact have been griefing attempts. Macedon and Mencer used to be regular invaders - their operations being of a similar scale to what I've described as an "ideal" invasion - just that they would attempt to grief the region. These have stopped because of SC Liberations. If this were the case, either you'd need to make griefing more easily possible again, or accept that these invasions are gone.
- It could be that these invasions still happen. Catholic is an example, and there have been other occupations of regions (though generally with higher endorsement counts). It could be just that the weight of tag raiding means that we think they've declined in frequency.
- Influence. Well someone is going to blame it all on this.
The focus of this thread should be on why this change has occurred, rather than on Technical changes, as there's going to be the summit to cover that side of things. That said, feel free to claim that this change hasn't occurred, or that it's actually a good thing.